I agree with you, but can offer a counterpoint. A system administrator might setup a server in a certain way, and if they leave the replacement has a hard time

I agree with you, but can offer a counterpoint. A system administrator might setup a server in a certain way, and if they leave the replacement has a hard time discovering what they did. With IaC, all decisions are templated in the code and the replacement has full insight into the state of the machine.